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The Smart Cookies podcast

The Smart Cookies podcast

por Zaza

Historia Filosofía

Temporada 1

"AI Will Be The Last Mistake Humanity Ever Makes..." With Prof. David Krueger

2026 has been a groundbreaking year for AI development - frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have not only reached frightening capability levels, but like the Hugging Face incident illustrates, they have also began to act autonomously in malicious ways. And yet instead of pausing their development, AI labs rush ahead, doing everything they can to win the "AI race," (whatever that means). But what if the end result of all this is the end of humanity itself? This is exactly what David Krueger, Assistant Professor in Robust, Reasoning, and Responsible AI at the University of Montreal, worries about. That's why he founded Evitable, a nonprofit whose mission is to inform and organise the public to confront societal-scale risks of AI, and put an end to the reckless race to develop superintelligence. We talk about AI skepticism, the pernicious ideology of AI CEO's and about our duty to organise and stop this madness before it's too late....

Staying Healthy In The Age Of The Obesity Epidemic. With Dr. Stephan Guyenet

Most of us have probably wanted to lose some weight at some point or another, only to find out it's much easier said than done. And even if we actually managed to hit our goal, maintaining this new weight became all but impossible. Why is it so hard? It turns out that when trying to lose weight we aren't just fighting our daily temptations - we are taking on prehistoric mechanisms put there by evolution to ensure our survival. Couple that with our disastrous food environment, the growing obesity epidemic and fast lifestyles, and you've got a disaster on your hands. So how can we get out of this vicious loop? To find out, I turn to dr. Stephan Guyenet - a neuroscientist, obesity researcher and author of the bestselling book, "The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat."

The Future Is Chinese - Here's Why. With Prof. Steve Keen

It's no secret that the West is in terminal decline, while China continues to grow and is currently on the verge of overtaking the US as the biggest economy on the planet. Mainstream economics tells us that's impossible, since we supposedly live in the best system that was ever created. Which means something doesn't add up. Economist Steve Keen has an answer - our economic models are irreparably broken... In this sobering conversation Prof. Keen, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, explains why America remains a hopeless case, why China will continue to dominate world trade and finally, why the AI bubble is about to burst.

Are We Losing the Climate Change Fight? With Prof. Michael Mann

Michael Mann is a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Our Fragile Moment. He's also one of the most renowned climatologists in the world - and that's why I was over the moon when he agreed to have a chat with me... Given the extremely grim daily news on climate change, I ask Prof. Mann whether the fight for a habitable planet is over, how bad he thinks the upcoming El Nino will be, and finally, what kind of consequences do Trump's insane, climate denial policies have for the world's decarbonisation plans.

Why AI Won't Replace Workers, But Will Crash The Economy. With Cory Doctorow

I'm super stoked to welcome back the legendary blogger, journalist and author of Enshittification, Cory Doctorow. This time around we tackle his latest book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence — Before It's Too Late. I ask Cory about the ideology behind the shameless AI push, the state of this technology in 2026, the billionaires lapping it up, as well as the feared AI bubble that Corey believes will tank the entire system.

What The Japanese Thought Of The First Westerners... And Vice Versa. With dr. Christopher Harding

I'm super happy to welcome dr. Christopher Harding, lecturer in Asian history at the University of Edinburgh, back to the show, to have a chat about his amazing upcoming book, "Barbarians: The First Century of European Encounter with Japan." This time around we talk about a myriad of fascinating episodes that arose from this dramatic exchange - the first Portuguese landing on Tanegashima, the curiosity their appearances caused, the introduction of Christianity in Japan, the growing power of the Jesuits and finally, the expulsion of all foreigners in 1641. Obviously we can't get past the infamous bromance between William Adams and Tokugawa Ieyasu that inspired the popular TV show Shogun. As a foreigner in Japan myself, I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of my favourite conversations this year.

What Were The Crusades Like From The Muslim Side? With Prof. Nicholas Morton

Medieval historian and champion of the podcast, Prof. Nicholas Morton (from Nottingham Trent University) is back on the pod to talk about the feverish history of the Crusades - only this time, we explore the subject from the perspective of the Muslim nations who were fighting for supremacy in the tricky landscape of the medieval Middle East... What did they think when they first saw these unexpected strangers in their lands? Did jihad become a thing just like a holy war in Christendom? And why was it so important for Saladin to tear Jerusalem from Crusader's hands? We chat about all this and more in this action packed episode!

The Wild Lives of Nigerian Romance Scammers | Carlos Barragan

In 2015, Carlos Barragan, a young Spanish journalist working for The New York Times, received a surprise - his mother, having long being single, told him she finally met somebody on Tinder. The man's name was Brian and he was an American soldier stationed in Syria. Carlos' alarm bells however, started going off immediately - and sure enough, he quickly tracked "Brian's" IP address not to the US, but to Lagos, the capital of Nigeria. Being intent on finding the scammer himself, he travelled to the country only to find himself embedded into the culture of the so-called Yahoo Boys - poor young men, who saw scamming Westerners as their only ticket out of the slums. Carlos' extensive experiences in Nigeria gave birth to his reportage book, The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria's Romance Scammers, which has been touted as the most anticipated non-fiction book of 2026 by most major publications. In this conversation we talk about his first journey to Nigeria, his life in the infamous Ikotun slum, the fates of his 4 main characters, but also about the loneliness epidemic in the West that's making this all possible.

Why The Odyssey Is Actually About A Broken War Veteran | Prof. Peter Meineck

Christopher Nolan's retelling of Homer's famous epic is causing a lot of sassy drama these days, so I thought it'd be appropriate to have a chat with a Greek Mythology expert, and pick his brain on what this foundational poem of Western literature is really about - because cause truth be told, I don't think I really know. Is The Odyssey about heroism? Homecoming? Fate? To find out, I talk to Prof. Peter Meineck, the renowned professor of Classics in the Modern World at NYU. And since the internet seems ablaze with controversy regarding Christopher Nolan's upcoming adaptation, we have a chat about that as well...

Ancient Roman Slavery: The Cruel Reality Behind The Empire | Dr. Emma Southon

When we discuss Rome, we usually talk about the Emperors, the Warlords and the Conquerors, rarely about ordinary Romans... and almost never about the people who actually built it - the slaves. With her recently released book SERVUS: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire, historian Emma Southon attempts to shift that narrative. In this convo we talk about how one could became enslaved, what it was like to visit a Roman slave market, how slaves coped with the brutality of their everyday life, but also, why the Romans are so easy to roast.

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